Thwarting the Twins for the Clumsy and Uncoordinated (MM Hunters)

You may have been like me and leisurely popped into this scenario expecting it to be like any other quest, and perhaps, like me, you were promptly annihilated in the first phase and left bewildered and intimidated. But take heart! After some research and preparation, even I, crappy player who stares at my action bars during raid and hasn't kited anything tougher than an Outland elite mob back in Burning Crusade, was able to complete this encounter in around 20 attempts. I will attempt to cover everything I did here in as much detail as possible.

To set the stage, as a super-cautious, risk averse, and overall not very skilled player, my approach was to try to absolutely minimize the chance of death and not worry about damage. As a result, my kill took a total of 13 minutes, whereas the kill videos by better players I used for reference were around 8-9 minutes. The key takeaway here is that you can take your time with this encounter so long as you execute correctly in the particular areas required. It also means that DPS output and item level are not of overwhelming importance outside of a few key moments which I will elaborate below.

Buffs/consumables:Bear Tartare - suggested, but I actually forgot to eat it before my attempts, so I guess it wasn't actually necessary. You could eat DPS food instead if you're not having trouble with movement speed.Flask of the Seventh Demon - again suggested, but I forgot to drink this too, so not explicitly required either.Potion of Prolonged Power - I used these because they were cheaper (and theoretically better for AOE), but you might replace the prepot with Potion of Deadly Grace if you're rich like that.Drums of the Mountain - not sure if required, but I did use it.

Video ReferenceThis video was my primary reference. It would probably be good to watch it through once or twice just to see how the encounter flows and what to expect.

Now, for the actual strategy, broken down by phase.

Phase 1The key observation in this phase is that you can kite Karam nearly indefinitely through the use of Concussive Shot and Disengage without ever being in danger of dying, so long as you maintain 100% uptime on Concussive Shot's slowing debuff. Tar Trap is nice but I definitely did not use it that often. While strafing away from Karam, I mainly used instant-cast abilities, throwing in Windburst or normal Aimed Shots when I was a comfortable distance away (usually immediately prior to or following a Disengage). However, maintaining the Concussive Shot slow on Karam took absolute priority over everything else. One key note is that Concussive Shot is on the Global Cooldown with your other abilities, so you need to make sure it actually gets casted when you hit the button. Using the mousewheel macro was very useful for this exact purpose.

During the initial roleplay dialogue, you'll want to position yourself some distance from Karam for the initial kiting. I started as far away as I could near the initial spawn point where you first teleport into the encounter. I threw my Tar Trap in front of Karam's feet when Raest said "Kill this interloper, brother!" and drank my first Potion of Prolonged Power before combat began when Karam said "I... obey." As he became hostile, I was scrolling down on the mousewheel to immediately hit him with Concussive Shot out of the gate, then Trueshot -> Windburst -> Piercing Shot -> Explosive Shot -> Arcane Shot/Marked Shot alternating until the end of Trueshot. Obviously you would want to be in motion after the Windburst cast and kiting Karam in your desired direction. After Trueshot ended, I just kept strafing in a circular path around Raest, keeping Concussive Shot applied to Karam and whittling down his health. There is no hurry in this phase of the encounter and after a few tries you should be fairly comfortable in getting through alive. As a reference, I generally got Karam to 35% to force Phase 2 slightly after my Trueshot came off cooldown.

Karam also appears to drop purple pools underneath him while he runs. These will slow you if you run through them, so try to avoid them. The number of pools will accumulate as the encounter goes on, which is a disadvantage for a conservative strategy like this one which will take longer, but I found that after a while the pools just stacked on top of each other and didn't become especially bad, even with a 13 minute fight.

Phase 2When Karam hits 35% health, he will become invulnerable while casting Purgatory to recover. Raest then becomes targetable and you should start damaging him. Soon after, you will see the message "Raest Rifts to the Nether!" and a purple portal will spawn near him. I tried to position myself so that Raest was between myself and the portal. The portal will spawn Shadowy Vestiges (low health) and Shadowy Fiends (higher health) which will slowly move towards you. I placed a Tar Trap near Raest's feet to slow these adds and used my second Trueshot at this time to kill as many adds as possible with Multi-Shot -> Marked Shot spam (with some Piercing/Explosive Shots tossed in). Raest will spawn more portals with additional adds, so continue damaging those too.

Soon after (~30 seconds), Karam will become active again and resume his chase, kicking off Phase 3. You will probably still have some Shadowy adds still up at this time.

Phase 3As soon as Karam becomes active, get the Concussive Shot slow on him immediately. The same rules as Phase 1 apply. You will generally never be in danger of him catching up so long as you maintain Concussive Shot uptime and use Disengage when he gets particularly close. The Shadowy adds are also very slow, and will never catch you as long as you keep moving, even without any movement speed debuffs.

The new mechanic in this phase is the Hand From Beyond, which casts Grasp from Beyond for 10 seconds and will most certainly kill you when the cast completes. This cast was the cause of the majority of my deaths during my attempts. Your only means of interrupting it is Counter Shot, and since Counter Shot has a 24 second cooldown, you can only interrupt each Hand one time. After being interrupted, the hand will stand idle and not do anything for a few seconds, before resuming the cast again. Killing this hand in time is the only real "DPS check" of this encounter, and the one place where I feel like better gear will help cover up suboptimal execution. Killing the Hands before they finish casting is the absolute top priority in this phase. When a Hand became active, I would scroll up to target and interrupt it, then exclusively damage the Hand only, scrolling down to keep Concussive Shot on Karam and scrolling up again to retarget the Hand. Having these two macros bound to mousewheel up and down helps to facilitate quick and precise target switching for people like me who have no confidence in their clicking accuracy. I saved high-damage abilities like Piercing Shot and Windburst for the Hands, only damaging Karam when there were no Hands active. It's probably possible to use your abilities more cleverly to get more damage on Karam and thus end the phase earlier, but I was going for the ultra-cautious approach, and so this method hopefully minimizes the risk of dying to Hands. I even used Trueshot on a Hand if I felt like I was unlucky with Marking Targets procs and didn't think I would kill it in time. If you have Sephuz's Secret equipped, you should also get the haste buff when you interrupt, which provides a helpful DPS boost. Hopefully your circular kiting has gathered the remaining Shadowy adds near Karam, so you can toss a Multi-Shot/Marked Shot combo on them when you get a Marking Targets proc and don't have any Hands up. A handful of Marked Shots should be enough to dispatch the remaining Shadowy adds.

The Hands have a nasty habit of spawning far away from you, and there will be cases where you are out of range even with MM's mastery range increase. Don't panic and remember that it's fine to take your natural circular path around as long as you make it close enough to interrupt before the 10 second cast completes.

Similarly to Phase 1, eventually you should reach a steady-state where Karam is comfortably slowed and you are steadily whittling away at his health, interrupting and burning down Hands as they spawn. Once Karam hits 35% health, he will go invulnerable again to cast Purgatory and Phase 4 will begin.

Phase 4Raest will do the same sequence as Phase 2, creating portals which spawn Shadowy Vestiges and Fiends. Since Trueshot was usually on cooldown at this point for me, I just positioned myself the same way as Phase 2 and tried to AOE the adds as best I could without it. The new mechanic in this phase is the Rune of Summoning, which places a purple rune on the ground for a few seconds, spawning a Thing of Nightmare on completion which will chase you down and most likely kill you. You can prevent the spawn by standing in the rune for around 3 seconds until you hear the deactivation sound and see a small wind-like animation (watch the video for examples).

You will likely only see one Rune before Karam finishes casting Purgatory and starts chasing you again, beginning the fifth and final phase.

Phase 5This phase has all of the mechanics of the previous phases, so you have to worry about Karam, Hands, Runes, and whatever Shadowy adds remain (but no new ones should spawn). There's a lot to keep track of but most of the notes from previous phases still apply.

These were my priorities in order:

Keep Concussive Shot slow on Karam

Move to and stand in Runes to deactivate them

Interrupt and DPS Hands

Use AOE abilities to damage Karam and Shadowy adds

Single target damage on Karam

As with Phase 3, Karam and the Shadowy adds should never be in danger of hitting you so long as you maintain Concussive Shot, keep moving, and use Disengage when they get uncomfortably close. Thus, aside from reapplying Concussive Shot, most of your attention can focus on the Hands and Runes.

The annoying thing about the Rune is that it sometimes spawns right behind whatever mobs you're kiting, and so it can be difficult to get to it without putting yourself in danger. These situations are when you should use your other crowd control abilities. If Karam is the only mob in dangerous proximity to the Rune, you can use Freezing Trap to root him while you stand in it (be careful not to damage him as it will break the trap). Note that Freezing trap will only freeze Karam for the PVP duration of a few seconds rather than the usual full minute, but that should give you enough time to deactivate the Rune. If there are multiple mobs near the Rune, use Bursting Shot (if you have the Magnetized Blasting Cap Launcher legendary) and Binding Shot to stun them while you stand in the rune, and then Disengage to get away. In the worst case scenario where the adds are virtually standing on top of the Rune, use Aspect of the Turtle and run directly to the Rune to deactivate it, running away as soon as you're done in order to get away again. You can also activate Aspect of the Cheetah if the path takes you through some of Karam's slowing pools. Note that if Karam uses Rising Dragon (his one-shot kill ability) while you have Aspect of the Turtle active, he will stand still for a moment after using it, giving you a precious few seconds to get away. Hopefully you will only need to use the Turtle approach once before you kill the remaining Shadowy adds, after which Freezing Trap will be sufficient to keep Karam rooted while you deactivate nearby runes. The timing of the Runes is such that Freezing Trap should be off cooldown for all of them.

I drank my second Potion of Prolonged Power and used my Drums of the Mountain immediately when Karam became active, trying to damage him but mostly focusing on killing the Shadowy Adds with AOE. Once Karam is the only mobile enemy the fight becomes somewhat easier due to the aforementioned Freezing Trap tactic. It's very easy to lose track of Hands during this hectic time, so make sure that your damage is focused on killing them, even while you are repositioning for the Runes.

Once all of the Shadowy adds are dead, the phase should settle to a steady-state where you're continuing to kite Karam, using the same tactics as Phase 3 for Hands and Freezing Trap for Runes. There's no more add spawns at this point, so feel free to use your Trueshots to get more damage on Karam while kiting. Technically you can complete the encounter by killing Raest and ignoring Karam, but I wanted to kill Karam first to be safe.

Once Karam dies, you can finally stop strafing and focus on killing Raest to complete the encounter. You still need to soak Runes and kill Hands, but these should be much easier to handle without Karam chasing you. The danger here is that by this point, you are likely at low health, and Raest's Shadow Bolts actually do a non-trivial amount of damage. I had 531 Leech (2.31%) and it was not sufficient to outheal Raest's damage. If you're low on health, you should use Exhilaration if available, but its long cooldown means that you probably will only be able to use it once in this part of the fight. It's a good idea to bring Ancient Healing Potions just in case. I was able to heal up enough to complete the fight using a last-ditch Healing Shell, which is probably the only time I've ever been thankful for the existence of that trait. Raest is also vulnerable to interrupts and stuns, so I used Bursting Shot to buy myself some time, but saved Counter Shot for potential Hand spawns. I do not know if Freezing Trap will work on him. So long as you don't die from the damage, you should be able to eventually kill Raest to complete the challenge.

Final ThoughtsOut of my 20 or so deaths on this scenario, the causes broke down roughly like this:

As you can see, the vast majority of my deaths were to Hands From Beyond, sometimes because I lost track of them completely, other times because I did not do enough damage to kill them in time, and occasionally because I accidentally scrolled up when no Hand was active, resulting in my casting Counter Shot on a non-Hand target, meaning that it was not available when the next hand spawned. With Concussive Shot active on Karam, I rarely felt that I was in danger of him catching up, and rarely did I die directly because of him.

The core kiting tactics require only Concussive Shot and Freezing Trap, so I saved Bursting Shot and Binding Shot for emergencies when I needed a few seconds of freedom. The most common use cases were soaking nearby Runes, and standing still to cast Aimed Shot to get some extra needed damage on a Hand.

As noted in the initial sections, I didn't have anything close to resembling optimal gearing or consumables and was still able to complete the encounter. Comparing my attempts to damage meters from other kill videos, I was probably doing ~25% less overall DPS over the course of the fight, so I do think this fight is doable with <900 gear or fewer traits. I would recommend using Sephuz's Secret and Magnetized Blasting Cap Launcher if available, but they did not feel absolutely necessary, so don't feel doomed if you don't have them.

Overall, I think that this approach is reasonable for those of you wanting a cautious, methodical strategy for the encounter. Hopefully these tips are helpful for those of you struggling.

Commenti

Commento di Dentarg

Wow, you did it the way it was supposed to be done. Everyone just killed raest and got credit :) Nicely done anyway!

Commento di pepper12345

This is the first time i see someone genuinely recommend Sephuz for anything.

Commento di Miguex79

Suggestion for the concussive macro: instead of using a /tar line, just set Karam Magespear as your focus and then use this:

/cast Concussive Shot

Saves you the trouble of targeting back and forth. If only i could come up with a way to do the same with the interrupt macro...

Commento di Trebr

After tons of tries learning the ropes with a solo build, at ilvl 930, finally took another thread's advice and tried with a pet and won.Build was 3311112 with LocknLoad active due to wearing Soul of the Huntmaster, also wore Sephuz and ate Bear Tartare.Let pet, a crab in tenacity spec, just help with the beatdown and for some reason (rng, positioning, whatever) after 30+ tries was able to burn Raest down with drums + potion when he became active the second time.Put Karam as focus target and used 3 macros, had to be careful with the 3rd one as it will try to cast both shots:1: /cast Concussive Shot2: /target Raest Magespear3: /target Hand From Beyond/cast Counter Shot/cast Piercing Shot